She wore a gas mask that covered her face, even her hair. The rubber of the accessory stretched all the way down and around her neck and her clothes were all tightly sealed and lengthily sleeved. The combined ensemble, gloves, boots and all, were enough to completely cover my 'rescuer' from head to toe with not a lick of skin visible. Two pistols were holstered on both her thighs, with her main firearm, an assault rifle, strung over her left shoulder.
“Stop gawking!” she commanded, dragging me to my feet. My prosthetic legs, not needing any form of rebooting like my physical body does, found their steps almost instantaneously.
“What's...going on?” I asked groggily, pushing myself away from her.
I stumbled towards the wall where I took cover, out of the line of sights of the attacking machines and clear of the line of fire from the humans who kept up their shooting.
“What does it look like?” she ran up to me, shouting through her mask. “We need to get you out of here before you get skinned by those damn machines!” It was then that I noticed a name tag dangling from one of the many carabiners hanging around her waist.
I read aloud, “Amelia?”
“Con-fucking-gradulations. You figured out my name. Now can we get a move on?”
Needless to say, I was reluctant to follow. But between mysterious humans with guns and alien-like robots clawing their way into a mountain side, I had to go with humanity on that.
Unsure of what to say, I simply nodded to her, to which she signalled to her, I guess, squad, “Back to the tunnels!” turning to me, she commanded, “Stick close to me!”
She rushed forward towards the cover of the walls of the blasted opening and I followed after, sliding behind the steel between her and another soldier. She pulled her rifle up to ready in her left hand, preparing herself to shoot if necessary.
The soldier behind me, wielding a inconsistently small sub-machine gun said through his muffled breath, “Name's Borris sir. It's a real honour to meet you!”
“I guess I'm likewise then!” I yelled back a greeting as another round of suppression fire took place.
Annoyed, Amelia scolded him, “Save your bootlicking for after we get out of this!” She turned to the Cryo-Tube and I saw a figure working on the machine that I had missed before. A man, padded at the joints from shoulders to knees and carrying a backpack almost the size of his body, stood at the machines' side, pulling open panes after panels. “Brother! You found the data?”
On cue, the brother pulled out a hard-drive from the bottom of the machine. Raising it above his head, he shouted back, “Got it!” And made a beeline for the opposite wall where he took cover with two others.
“Alright,” Amelia said and turned to Borris. “EMP those bastards!”
Borris circled around me with a politely out-of-situation, “Excuse me.”
From one of his many belt pouches, he pulled out an egged-shaped device which, by the orders given by Amelia, I would assume was an electromagnetic pulse bomb. He squeezed the side of it gently and the device's edge glowed with a blue light.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted as he got to his feet to toss the grenade.
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The grenade left his hand, flying out of sight towards the hulking spider bots. A metal spike was returned in kind, slashing through the air before of me, piercing clean through Borris's chest, taking him off his feet, flinging him backward from the sheer momentum. The spike clang into the Cryo-Tube, embedding deep into the metal.
I heard myself called out, “No!” Though I sounded as if I was an outsider, listening to a recording of my own voice.
I jumped out from hiding, with Amelia's futile attempt to stop me being swatted away. I ran towards the downed man, popping out of cover just as the EMP wave blasted through the air. My prosthetic legs and arm gave way and I fell forward towards him. The last image I saw before my camera-eyes frizzled out was of my good hand wrapping around Borris's wrist.
“Milton!” Amelia's brother yelled. “Amelia! Get him to the tunnels!”
“No!” I shouted back. I couldn't feel what I was doing, or see where I was. I could not even move most of my body. All I could do was will my body to keep a grip on Borris. Even that I was not sure I was actually doing. “We're not leaving him!”
Amelia's voice came close to me and I could hearing her screaming into my ear. “He's gone! He's gone! The EMP won't last! We've got to get you out!”
“We've got to save him!” I pleaded back to the group, but was ignored.
I could hear myself being dragged away, the rocks crunching under me as I sobbed in protest. But with just one working limb, I could only hear the failing flails of my arm, slapping against the ground.
The brother gently said, “Stop swinging. You're going to hurt yourself.” And with reluctance, I stopped fighting. I heard my hand gave the ground one final thud as it went limp in resignation.
My mind blanked out. As the sound of the waterfalls muffled, I could only think of how someone else had given their life for mine. How somehow, I had once again became the princess that needed to be rescued. I lamented and could hear my teeth cracking as I gritted in anger and frustration at myself. A small explosion sounded, followed by the sound of collapsing rocks. The sound of splashing water muted almost instantaneously as the tunnel got barricaded.
“We're safe for now,” I could hear Amelia say. “Put him down and go scout ahead. Make sure the path is still clear.”
With that, the sound of two distinct sets of footsteps retreated into the distant, echoing off the tunnel walls for a full minute before finally fading away.
Numbed and still in shock, I asked, “Why? Why did you save me?” And the only reply I received was the shallow breathing of my companions. “I'm no hero. I can't save the world. There's no use risking your lives for mine.”
“Stop whining,” Amelia replied coldly. “Just be glad you're still alive.”
Her brother muttered futilely to stop her, “Milly...”
“At what cost?” I asked. My eyes began to reboot, but slowly. I could see a patch of grey and hear the lens of the cameras zooming in and out as it calibrated itself. “Borris is dead.”
Even colder, she said, “He knew what he was getting into.”
Something in me snapped and I yelled, “How could you say that! Don't you even care about other people?!”
She screamed back, “Of course I do! But what's the point of dwelling on it! Our goal was to save you!”
“WHY?”I shouted. “Why can't you just leave me to die and save yourself?”
“You fucking idiot!” she let out, banging her fist against the wall. Colours returned to my vision but the image was still too blurry to make out anything beyond blobbed figures. “Was mom trying to say something when she named me after a dumb fuck like you?”
Her sentence stunned me as I caught the one word that stuck out. “Mom?”
“Yeah! Amelia. Milly. Milly-fucking-Smith!” she punctuated violently. “You want to know why we saved you? Because we're fucking family you retarded fuck shit! ARGH!” In my shock, I could only sit and listen as she stomped off, cursing colourfully under her breath.
Scuffling up beside me, my vision finally fully returned as I took a look at the man that was her brother. Older than the photo I had of him by at least two decades, he treated my bleeding arm that was scratched up in my fit and struggle. I looked down to my hand and in it was a blood covered, brown, plastic analogue watch. Borris's watch.
The brother replied, “Sorry about Milly. She's a little straightforward at times. And short tempered. And violent. But she means well. Mostly.”
I looked up to the young man with his mask off. With a straight scar across his lips, angling rightward down his chin, crossing a ragged stubble of beard, he looked as worn as the stretched glazed look in his eyes suggested, but somehow still managed to maintain an air of calm and patience with his gentle smile. His auburn hair, the colour of his mother's, was kept in a short crew cut.
With a croaking voice, I whimpered, “John?”
His smile widened as he finished cleaning my wounds, wrapping a bandage around the cuts of my arm. “Alright grandpa. Let's get going.”